


Betty Coe, and Coco Too

by Labailey



Category: Betty Boop (Short Films)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Alternate Universe, Betty Boop - Freeform, Boats and Ships, Character Development, Cool Uncle, Dark Comedy, Developing Friendships, Dieselpunk, Drunken Shenanigans, High Seas, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Male Friendship, Memoirs, Mistakes, Mobsters, Nautical, Nonsense, Ocean, Personal Growth, Picaresque, Pirates, Popeye - Freeform, Sailing, Sailor AU, Tugboats, Worldbuilding, barges - Freeform, clown, dumb boys, dumb crimes, episodic, jerks becoming better people, mafia, making amends, maritime, scumbaggery, secondary world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:53:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29137365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Labailey/pseuds/Labailey
Summary: A retired Coco The Clumsy Clown writes the story of how he survived gangsters and pirate fleets in the floating city of Oceanburg, as one half of the squabbling comedy and music team "Betty and Coco". This exclusive memoir reveals the real, never-before told story of how the famous sailor family, The Fighting Schlumpfs, "Betty Coe," and Coco The Clumsy Clown, brought color into the world at the historic Battle Of Oceanburg... and how the legendary Petey Schlumpf is really "a ****ing idiot what shoulda been dead years ago."
Kudos: 1





	Betty Coe, and Coco Too

BETTY COE, AND COCO TOO:  
A MEMOIR

Chapter 1:  
Dregs And Dregs Alike

Betty Coe's boyfriend was a dog, or at least something like a dog. His name was Beppo.

It was a weird scene, man. Even before you got into that jazz with the Schlumpfs, pirates, pixies, and the whole hot-to-trot caper, I'm telling you; weird scene. Whatever. I know what you want me to talk about. The big quote.

"They kept the color in a cage, and only let it out to dance on stage."

Cue the applause, it's the showstopper, yeah, yeah. The big Oceanburg cliche. Go screw. I was there when they wrote the song, and when it happened. That lyric isn’t a wild metaphor, it’s a very literal description of how they did business in the Margaritaria Nightclub. The world was different then, you kids have no idea what is was like to literally see everything in the world as just tones of black and white. 

The size of this generational gap, I can't even describe it. You ever think about that ninety percent number? Ninety percent of all humans never seeing color until… well, you know. 

Or maybe not, if it's not from the last ten years then all all you lousy mainland bums don't wanna know. Same with the Margaritaria gangsters back then. Bozos and pinheads, all of them. You’d think they’d let the color out and dazzle everybody during all business hours. No. The stage had a mechanical aviary that rose out of a trap door, and they attached the cage, opened it, and had the band play for an hour. That’s what you got for the ridiculous cover charge at the door, a glorified canary show. They had dancers, a regular band set, the occasional comedian. Whatever, a show’s a show.

I can’t pretend I was any better than its regulars. I avoided the club, not out of moral superiority but because I thought color was stupid. You have to understand, color felt like psychedelics when the world was grey. Then once you saw color sober, using dope in your free time would make you see it more. So a lot of us were ignorant. We figured these decadent types were just frying their brains, and good riddance. I didn't need no junk, I needed scratch and plenty Goddamn of it. Yeah.

So anyway, Betty's boyfriend was this crazy kinda dogfaced type with floppy ears, a wet nose and two legs, so I don't know what to tell ya. It wasn't something anybody brought up. As far as I was concerned, she was a lovely and downright decent citizen trapped in the body of a degenerate freakass floozy with a knife in her garters, so good on her for getting hers. And what am I gonna do, criticize Beppo for getting in there with Betty Coe? Hell no, I oughtoo 've shook his hand and asked whaddaya say. Sure he was a dog, but a dog with taste is better than most of the guys I've known. Sauce what's good for the goose is good for the Goddamn gander in whatever room those two ever been in.

You gotta understand that I'm not the writing type, and that's the real Tabasco. Tough tits, you wanna know about the Color Explosion at Oceanburg, ain't no one else talkin'.

To you suckers, at least. The old skull flab ain't always so good so I called everybody still around and interviewed them, checked my memory and gave the most accurate account I can. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the history you think you know. 

Now we got an uncomfortable subject. Somonas don’t have the lifespan humans do. Bromgomguli, Dobaāba, Verusuonu, none of those guys are around anymore. I reached out to their families, but none of them want anything to do with me. I don’t blame them. Whenever I whine about this generation getting things wrong, that’s something you all have over us and it’s the most important. None of us even knew Brom’s name was Bromgomguli. We thought it was Brom Gom Gooley. Ay-y-y, Brom's Place. Brom Gom Gooley's Restaurant. Most everybody didn’t even call him that, we called him “Big Boy” and didn’t know it was racist. We called them Somonamen. There’s no excuse for it, we were ignorant and that contributed to their shitty situation. We actually thought they stayed away from the dome because they wanted to. “Oh, that’s the Somonamen for you,” right? People on the dome didn’t know, I was working the docks and hanging out with them, I knew and worked with these guys, no idea. 

It seems unbelievable now that we didn’t know about the segregation problem. If you don’t believe it, I don’t blame you. Their grandkids definitely don’t believe me. If you asked me about it at the time, I’d just point at Old Man Schlumpf. Ochre didn’t go anywhere near the dome either. Lots of the Outtown guys didn’t, they hated the Uptown crowd and they didn't want us around anyway. We thought it was the same deal with the Somona. It didn’t occur to us that humans, white humans, could go anywhere they wanted and had a choice without someone coming after their family. 

The thought that Brom, or anyone like Brom, had to deal with that is disgusting and evil. I’m sorry. That’s not worth much, but I am. If I could undo any mistake in my life it would be that whole thing. I’ll probably write more offensive stuff and not know it, and I’m sorry about that too. I’m trying to be better, way too late. These people needed support against all kinds of injustice back then and we made it worse. We was the problem. I was. I swear to God, I just didn’t know, my head was too far up my own ass. If I hadn’t been so stupid, I could have apologized to the guys and their families while they were still alive and it makes me sick. I accept responsibility, and wish I could do more. 

Right. So this ain't no bragging or nothing, but people knew me before they knew no Betty Coe. When it comes to local characters, I was what you'd call a sprinter and she was stretching for the marathon. I don't think any of you remember who the hell I am, but this next bit is for any of you who do. 

Right before Betty Coe took off on radio? I wasn't PDI then. I was an inspector, which sounds a lot more important than it was. We were just barely preteen kids, our job was to be a bunch of little squealers. We’d each have a beat, and make rounds on our bikes once a week. The bike was the reason I went for the gig. We got to keep it. Well, if you stuck to it. Most kids didn’t, since the business was a racket. They overcharged us, docked our pay for it, and if you quit before it was paid off in full they repossessed it. You didn’t get the money you paid on it either, believe that. They gave us only four dollars a month until the bike was paid off, and then you had to fight to get them to admit it. 

Worked out pretty good for me, because; think about it. As rough as the newsboys had it, if they sold all their papers and scammed a bit, they could make sixty cents a day. About seventeen, nineteen dollars a month. Us making four dollars a month for a year sucked eggs, but again; think about it. We made roughly twenty percent of what they made a month, but they worked every day and we worked four. Then we’d have our regular job, and all of us were thieving and scamming on the side. On a good month, I could clear thirty dollars easy. Newsboys don’t have it so good now. Then I had drive, so I was one of the few kids that stuck with it and paid off the bike. 

So. 

Now I own the bike, right? And after fighting the Port Office a while, I get the garnishments lifted. So now four days of inspection gets me fifteen dollars a month instead of four. Then I got my Uncle Bulgi’s help, and was reimbursed for the wage garnishment that shouldn't have happened. I made more than a lot of Outtown adults that month. 

So I keep at it, keep working, get known, backstab a few people, then by the time I turned fourteen? I’m working directly under the current PDI, Marky Zola. My beat’s the whole three-to-six side of Outtown, and I didn’t have to write reports anymore. I was experienced, and Marky was a good delegator, so I got the unofficial in-house designation of “Site Surveyor”. I just rode my bike past the point defenses, then stopped in at Marky’s office and told him where to send inspectors. Now a full day’s work only took half a day at most, and I started taking bribes to tell people how they could get around restrictions or just ignoring small things I knew Marky didn't care so much about. It was gravy, and I had all the rest of the month to do whatever I had to do. Usually scamming the docks with my brothers, we didn’t stay in many straight jobs for long. 

That's how I got in with the famous Schlumpfs, and the whole fight with the pirates and the color explosion and whatever. 

Shit happens, get me?

You probably know Petey Schlumpf. Or Petie, however you kids are spelling it. None of us could read or write until our twenties, we ain't gonna keep that straight. Anyway. You probably bought this book just to read about him. Well, yeah, he's bigger than life now, but back then… I don’t know how to convince you that nobody messed with that kid's uncle. 

It was all about that old man. He was a legend. Not one body got in Ochre Schlumpf’s business. It’s up in the air whether he was a freak of nature, or what. The man was five foot five, and strong like a giant. You heard about him running around deck with a miniature cannon to ward off pirates? That’s true, but here’s the scoop. That old Pirtaboe six-pounder he had; seems like people have this idea in their heads it was portable. Something small you could carry on your back. No, folks. No. When you called a cannon a “pounder”, that’s not how much it weighed. That’s how much the ammunition weighed. That famous Family Schlumpf “miniature” Pirtaboe was a mass-produced scaled-down field artillery model from the Appalachian Wars, designed to be carted uphill by a single mule at speed. So, portable by army standards, dig? It weighed three hundred damn pounds, and that saltbit sea monster of a man hauled it all around his boat like it was nothing. And he didn’t shoot case shot either, he used real cannonballs. Lord knows why the pirates never learned to steer clear. He lit them up like a cigar with that weapon. Aimed for the wheelhouse, too. None of us can agree how many times they actually managed to board him, but I’ll tell you right now that he was even more dangerous if you got in punching distance.

There are official-like, real reports of him fighting in the raids of twenty three, when the English openly declared their pirates as privateers. It makes for a scary read. The raids ended with the only full assault on the Burg in all its history. With the nine-to-eleven point defenses sabotaged, the pirates got landing craft on us under supporting bombardment and their forces broke through the line. They never got to the dome, lemme tell ya. Multiple credible eyewitness accounts describe Schlumpf tucking that big old cannon under his arm, spreading his feet, and swinging on a fighter. Clocked that pirate good.

Some tall tale, right? A boozy fish story to share with gullible drunks? Wrong. Three of those eyewitnesses were a militia medical team. The cannon swing popped one of the guy’s kidneys, hit a rib which punctured his lung, grievously injured his liver and knocked him off a tall enough height to break his back without killing him. The lead surgeon pulled out an old army pistol, and just shot the guy like you'd shoot a broke horse. People witnessed it, which led to an official investigation and documentation to go along. The lead surgeon was exonerated, and the meister awarded Schlumpf a Medal Of Civic Service. 

So my point here, is that official hoity-toity city government records confirm that this man could swing a wrought-iron cannon like it was an oar. Pirates took cracks at him on the open sea, but around here? In Oceanburg?! There wasn’t any kind of local mug dumb enough to fight this man. What would you even call that? Suicide, or criminal negligence? It’s impossible to overstate that Nobody. Bothered. Captain Schlumpf.

Well, locally. Like I said. The pirates never got it insode their empty skulls to leave him alone. As dumb as the Uptown gangsters were, even they figured that out, and it didn’t take them long neither. Not so much with the pirates. They struggled. The way I figure it, Schlumpf could have just killed them all instead of fending them off time and time again, but he had too good a business going to end it. That’s the only explanation. Hell, if they hadn’t been Limie scum he probably would have made them partners.

Nah. He had too many principles. There were plenty of honest people in the Burg who weren’t dirty. Ochre was still a cut above them. We’re talking mule-stubborn righteousness. Otherwise he never would have stuck it out through his nephew’s whole mess.

I suppose I should finally talk about that, right? Betty Coe, the sea chase, the whole shebang. You don’t care about the Burg, it’s all about Petey’s adventure and how he helped Betty Coe, Beppo, and me bring color to the whole world. I bet you skipped forward until you saw his name. Okay. I’ll tell you about Petey. The kid was a regular gooney bird. I’ve never met anybody half as goofy as him. Forget whatever picture you have in your head of Pete Schlumpf. The boy was a mistake on two legs, and that’s the real Tabasco. Forget me not being able to write, that's it right there.

He was also my best friend. Nobody’s perfect, fellas.

I didn’t know him when he first came to the Burg, but we all knew about Petey. Captain Schlumpf’s useless brother’s useless kid on the mainland. That type of stuff appeals. The old man really was just larger than life. You’d see him around (especially when you biked around the docks), smoking a corncob pipe and nodding whenever someone greeted him. And everyone greeted him. We’d sit on our bikes and watch him, sharing stories that we didn’t know anything about. Oh yeah, he killed twenty men in the raids, well my dad says he’s a smuggler and he was in with the pirate queen until he settled down with Marianna, says you, yeah says me so say somethin' else, well I heard he used to be a gold miner, did you know he sold guns to cannibals, well I heard…

Naturally, whenever you heard adults gossiping about his family, you were all ears. So even before Petey sailed here and moved in with his uncle Ochre, we thought we knew all about it.

Then he showed.

It was an idle day. I wasn't with nobody, I was just shitkicking at a pier, drinking bottom-barrel bathtub hooch from a milk bottle wrapped in a nickle sack and pitchin' garbage at seagulls while I waited for the chemist's to open. It was early, bit after the fishermen gone out already, so I thought I'd be alone for another hour. Jumped out of my skin when I heard Captain Schlumpf's voice from nowhere.

“Ho, Cocoljko!" he says.

Captain Schlumpf had come out from his boat further down by the barnacle-covered, half rotted beater pylons and was waving. Even though he said my name, I still looked around for who he was talking at, you know?

"Cocoljko Broniszlaw!"

I still couldn't believe it. I pulled out a stick of gum and chewed it, you know. Me?

“What’s the matter with you boy, they didn’t tell you your whole name yet? Yes, you! Come here!”

So, Hell. I go down. First time this man ever talked to me. He knew my name. He knew my name. Now, looking back… of course he did, right? But to some latchkey kid taking a lack of respect for himself as proper and correct, waiting for my chance, this was big news. I swaggered, trying to be slick, walking slow down the wooden staircases to the lower docks with the tugs, just saunter up in front of his boat like it's nothing.

He looked down his beard at me, his chest and shoulders poking over his metal bulwarks and thick rubber tires chained around them.

“Don’t tell me you’re going deaf, young man,” he says, and I say, “No, Sir," and he busts my balls, he says, "You're sure? Nothing wrong with being deaf, the postman's deaf you know," and I says "I know, Sir, but I hear ya."

“Good, good. How’s your father doing? Well, I hope."

“Yes, sir.” Pops knew Ochre Schlumpf? Captain Schlumpf knew my father?!

“Here, there’s someone I want you to meet. Petey, come here.”

That's where it all rolled over. 

This kid, I seen him come out of somewhere on the stern and stand by the tattiebox. I guess he was moving groceries. He tried leaning into his elbow on a barrel of apples all jaunty, which almost fell over. 

He wobbled and steadied it in a panic, then leaned on it again, more carefully. 

I hated the sight of him.

He deserved it, the kid was in a vest. He's wearing a blue vest, with some coiffing oil in his blonde hair, nice shirt, more than I could ever afford after I pitched in to the house pot, standing on the stern of a tugboat, and I hated him, I hated his stupid nose and I hated his skinny beanpole body and all I could think was, if it was just me and him? I could just take everything he had. I could just steal the shoes off his feet if I wanted, and this pencil-thin skunk wouldn't do nothin' about it.

But you know something, turns out, I was the first kid to meet him.

So, as the Old Man is talking to me, explaining that he was taking Petey on as a deckhand (Oo-oo-ooh, that stung! He didn't hire or need nobody! All us local brats woulda killed to work with him, and this doofus just walks in and gets to be a deckhand! It's all in who you know, kids), the kid was staying with him, would I mind showing him the ropes and introducing Petey to everybody?

So Petey needs a friend, does he? You get me? So all "Sure I will," I says, Anything, you name it, swell. And the Old Man, he wants to know if I've eaten anything, I say no, so he invites me in and fries me up some eggs and smoked ham in the galley. Ochre Schlumpf cooked for me, he's talkin' to me, about my business, what I do, inspecting and all! He talks to me like a man at his galley table, and Petey's hovering nearby quiet like a little kid with manners, and let me tell you-- he was older than me! I felt big as a house. Important.

So that's how I fell in with him.

Later, at my house, over dinner, when I told my father about it, you gotta know Pops blew it off like it was no big thing. 

"Oh, how's that old bum doin'?" You know. Like Schlumpf ain't nothing and he's better. Nice try, Schlumpf had a house and a boat and my father jumped from rentshack to rentshack his whole life. But sure. You're a supervisor, Dad. You're the big man. 

I didn't push it, I knew.

And I schmoozed Petey, kept him out of trouble, and I started hanging out on the Schlumpf tug whenever they were tied off, and I started getting looks. Good looks. Not respect, but the kind of notice you get when someone who does get respect makes a point of noticing you so someone else does. Even from Marky Zola. Him and me always got on, he thought I was alright, but now I was with Schlumpf on the side instead of robbing and scamming. I think he was proud of me.

Markie Zola was a swell guy.

Anyway, so I was big man with the block kids now, right? We're nice to Petey. Me more than anybody and I'd just as soon stuff him in a dumpster. No way he could last. Kid like that? Doing boat work? What a laugh.

Much to our disappointment, Petey was resilient, and Ochre loved Petey. The captain changed over night. All of a sudden he was talkative, social even, and had his nephew on his heels whenever he went. Turns out he knew a lot of us kids’ names, because he would stop in the street, say hi, and introduce Petey to us.

I was jealous. There’s no pretending I wasn’t, and that a part of me isn’t still. Petey was always going to be the protagonist of some story. Just that type of person. I’m the type of person who stays the same, and stays in the Burg. I probably sensed it even then. No matter my dreams.

That's why, a couple months later, I had it out with the Stryszowski sisters.

You see, maybe I wasn't telling the whole truth a little bit. I knew Betty Coe. I'd known her a while. But she wasn't Betty Coe then, she was named Sally Stryszowski. Her and her two sisters' family had money, and they thought they were better than me and my brothers.

We was always fighting. I can't remember what we was arguing about that day, for particular, but I was in a bad way and getting more jealous of Petey every day. So the Stryszowskis were little shits, end of discussion, but I was probably being more of an asshole than normal.

And I was screaming at Sally, really screamin' and letting her have it-- just a few years before she became the famous Betty Coe. 

I got the upper hand at some point, and got all condescending-like. Acted like she was mad and I wasn't. I remember, I said,

“Aw, your momma wears army boots,” and flipped her the bird.

“Yeah and she can kick your daddy’s ass!” She yelled. Everyone ripped into a squall of laughter and my face burned.

“Whaddoo you know, stupid?” I said, but was drowned out by my friends laughing at me.

🎶I~know~lots~of~stuff,🎶” she said sing-song, “🎶And~you~don’t~know~any--thing, be--cause~you’re~wa--ter~trash🎶 and you know something? Everyone says you wouldn’t be a hoodlum if your parents hadn't raised you like a dog.”

That got me hot again, and we were yelling, back at it, and at one point she laughed real mean, and I went cold and told her to shut her God Damn mouth.

“Make me,” She sneered. So I ran at her, and had a moment of evil triumph when I saw her surprise and fear.

Then she slammed her metal lunchpail into the side of my head and knocked my ass right to the ground. She froze until I started getting back to my feet, when she ran away as fast as she could.

Behind me, all my friends howled in laughter. David was actually rolling on the ground. I felt the side of my temple, and my fingers got blood on them.

“SHUT U-U-U-P!” I screamed at them as hard as I could, with my voice breaking. They laughed harder. Horribly, I started to cry. Just couldn’t stop. Awful. Head down, I ran to my back and peeled off, laughter still following at my back.

I didn't go home. My brothers were gonna hear about it and make me cry more. So I went to work. Figured it was the safest place.

Stupid. Marky saw me, snatched my punk ass up by a fistful of my hair and dragged me wailing into his office.

“Siddown,” He said, shoving me into a chair. He leaned on the armrests and glared into my face. He raised one hand to point at my bloody and bruised temple.

“Sally Stryszowski did that to you?” He asked.

I sensed opportunity. “Yeah,” I whimpered, “She-”

“Good for her!” He said, “Pickin’ on girls. What’s the matter with you?! Only mistake she made was not catchin’ you a second time on the backswing. I ever hear about you bothering anybody smaller than you again, I’ll toss you out on your ass and you better pray to God your father don’t find out about this. Get outta here.”

So I fucking did. I got on my bike and pedaled to the main drag, pickpocketed some people, stole cigarettes, then went to the lonely side of one of the out-of-the-way piers to be by myself. I hated everybody.

And wouldn't you know who fucking showed up.

“Heya,” said Petey, dropping down next to me. I said nothing, and pulled on a cigarette.

“I heard, uh… you got in a fight,” he said diplomatically.

My nostrils flared. “Yeah, so what?”

“You okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I snapped and looked at him, “Oh no, some girl slapped me, I’m probably gonna die. Oh no-o-o-o, somebody save me. You don’t know anything, dumbbell. You don’t even know what a fight is. You and all the rest of these losers. Talk about me however you want, I don’t care. It’s none of your business anyway! Go scram somewhere else, Stupid.”

“Okay,” He said quietly. He stood and walked away.

Then, unfortunately, I got an ugly clench. There’s no excuse for this, just a kid being angry.

“Hey,” I said, “Come back here.”

He stopped and turned.

“You really are stupid,” I said, “You can’t tell when somebody’s giving you a hard time? Gonna go home and cry?”

I hated the confusion on his face, but acted nice.

“I’m fine,” I said, “I’m joshing you. Sit down, for cripe's sake.”

He did.

“Wanna cigarette?”

“No thank you.”

“So,” I said, “You want to get into a nightclub, or what?”

This wasn't the first time I corrupted Petey. I'd showed him magazines from my Uncle Bulgi's before, issues of an old army entertainment rag called Bootlicker. The center pages had drawings of naked girls, most of them bad but highly Goddamn appreciated. The first page of every issue, burned into my memory, always read;

"Swear to Croist facking Jeezuss that the only worse poet thanna seargent is a major."

Pfc. Wemberly Willette, AWOL but not forgotten

Well. 

Petey and I was about to go AWOL. 

He stood on the back of my bike while I rode, and we stopped at my home just long enough to leave it there, then we started walkin'. He was excited since he'd never seen the city before, and here he was walking with his buddy-ole-pal Cocoljko. What a swell guy, he thought I was. This was a first for me and not just for him, 'cuz I hadn't ever been a swell guy or somebody's pal.

I really don't want to describe the Burg and its layout, but I probably have to because of all the changes that happened over the last few years, and your ignorant take on them. When I talk about round-the-clock, Outtown, Uptown, the city, the dome, and shit-- even if you been to Oceanburg yourself you probably got no clue what I'm talking about. Everything is the same as it was back then. Everything just gets reinforced and repaired over time like it was, because the Sahara Desert has a better chance of freezing solid than anybody figuring out how to change the Burg's architecture without sinking the bastard, so like I said it's the same but the language is different.

The names of everything has changed, sure, but the bigger problem is the entire system of words we used to describe the city and our navigations through it have been radically altered without our say-so.

Because the city leaders and respectable types didn't want us here no more. The descendants of the workers who literally built this place with their hands, the later generations of immigrants who filled the Burg and made it a community, everyone who made this place a viable place of business. Twenty years ago, the rich people, maybe ten percent of the population, decided they didn't need us any more. And it took a while, but they got their way.

Why? How? You. That's why, and how. You.

They changed the name of every section and every street and every line to make things easier on you. They first implemented Outtown curfews and crime initiatives to make you more comfortable, because God forbid you stay out of anywhere you're not welcome or needed. They cracked down on legal and illegal immigration (both!) for you. They dismantled the small education system we built up real careful-like because they wanted us replaced by you. They used Burgwide rent ordinances to force renters and smaller landlords back to the mainland so they could buy the buildings and rent them out dirt cheap to the seasonal, untrained workers they hired to replace the people whose families lived here for multiple generations for you, and when this almost immediately resulted in safety disasters, dockside incidents, deaths and injuries increasing tenfold, and the partial sinking of Oceanburg that continues slowly unresolved to this day that you probably don't know about, they did all that for you. 

They dismantled all trade and people that didn't directly service you, the tourists, and anyone else on the mainland who ever thought "Ooh, I'd like to go to Oceanburg some day!" after reviling us, trying to quarantine us, trying to starve us and treating us like a joke community of scum for all our community's history. You stole it. No real people wanted you here, but you wouldn't be refused, and the rich pigs obliged by destroying everything we were and exiling almost all of us. You won. Congratulations, you chicken-and-steak-eating vacationer rat fucks. Have a prize.

Part of me loves it, though, because you're too dumb to realize that the assholes who screwed us over do you twice as dirty. The city and the rich are one and the same now, and they just rob from you. If you've ever vacationed to the Burg in the last twenty years, you're a champion sap. They redesigned to whole place to screw you.

Since I got rich, I got to stay and rot along with it all. And hell, I get my piece of it. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

What this all means is that whatever you think you know about the Burg's city planning, you're wrong. That whole tourist shit about the red light, green light, and amber light districts?

HOW THE FUCK COULD WE HAVE HAD COLOR-CODED DISTRICTS WHEN ALMOST THE ENTIRE PLANET WAS BLACK, WHITE, AND SHADES OF GREY? IT'S A NAUTICAL "THEME" THE TOURIST BOARD CAME UP WITH!

There was never any "downtown," there was never a "battery," there were no promenades or "boardwalks" or any of that shit you'll see on a modern Oceanburg map, so forget it. To get you up to speed here, I'm gonna simplify how it was actually organized.

First, Oceanburg's foundations are a dense network of integrated double-skin barges, built to interlock and serve as a jigsaw puzzle of an island with voids and passageways honeycombing all of it. Maintenance of these went straight down the toilet when all the real workers got kicked out during the last couple decades, which is why the city can't stop voids from being breached and filling with water underneath their precious rich pig utopia. The abundance of money and procedures can't make up for the loss of communal knowledge. Reading the diagrams isn't the same as knowing the layout, or knowing which voids are prone to vacuum buildup and if a critical ____middle piece_____ is prone to condensate buildup on the ends and hogging out of alignment.

The overall setup of the Burg itself, built over that foundation, is the obstacles belts surrounding the freeboard, which is under the dome. The obstacle belts were always those docks armed to the teeth with point defenses-- the same ones I'd inspect on my bike, remember? Cannons, ballistas, even a few catapults. Anything we could muster and maintain. The first time people stopped giving a shit about these, that's when the raids happened and the pirates made their successful landing. So after that they've been kept up, even today during the tourist years.

Just inside the obstacle belts was the freeboard, a lower deck with most of the dives, worker housing, manufacturing and industrial areas, low rent shops, etc. This is what was called Outtown. That encircled an elevated deck where they had the city proper-- that was the dome, or just 'the city'. No, it was not actually round like a dome. At the highest point on the dome were the nice neighborhoods and even a Goddamned park-- that was Uptown.

Where Somona, animal folks, and people who aren't white finally get to live now. 

Whereas in my time we was too stupid to know they weren't allowed up there. I admitted that earlier. Or maybe everybody else in Outtown knew and I was the only stupid one. Impossible to say, when I ask everybody about it they all just make excuses. It's everybody's fault except them what got done dirty, and that's it. 

I'm over here, a local loser kid from the Belt jumped up to an Uptown apartment high above everything else, writing a book, bitching about the tourists and revisionism when it's the only thing come close to bringing economic and social equality to the Burg, ever. I'm not allowed to bitch anymore, I don't think. I'm old trash that somehow didn't get dumped along with the rest of the pile. When I finally die? Good riddance. Then again I held on this long outta sheer Goddamn spite so who knows, I may be around forever.

That day, walking with Petey. That was the first time I ever met Bromgomguli. Actually.

But anyway. So the whole floating city was a circle around a circle around a circle, you follow? And it was organized into districts and zones based on clock hours, starting at the outside around and around the furthermost edge of the obstacle belts. Nowhere near a real… round… circle, but close enough. Bit wobbled. It got a bit complicated the further in you got, but all you really need to know is that "Twelve O'clock" was kept pointing true north at all times-- right where they got The Bastard's Statue. So if I'm talking about the city and I mention the "nine-to-six", that's southwest. If I write the "one-to-three", that's in the northwest, right? If I say "The Six," then that would be dead south. And so on. Got it? Okay.

So. Assuming you didn't skim straight to Pete Schlumpf's name like I think you did, remember how I worked the three-to-six? That was my area, and I could get sent anywhere in that section, but I mainly made the rounds between the four and five-- our neighborhood, officially named 'Docks On The Forty-Five'. 

So that's where Petey and I was walking from, the furthest southeast area of Outtown. A couple dopey kids headed for trouble with gangsters and nightclubs. 

'Cuz I was so smart, right?!


End file.
